Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Wednesday 20 January 1954, page 2
WAY TO LUNACY
TJOW does M. Ryan
11 C¿Argus," lá/1) sug-
gest that his objective of a self-sufficient Austra
' lia with a population of
50 million be reached?
Not by maintaining and extending protective tariffs, let us hope.
Exporting food ls not es-capism, but merely the common-sense way of obtain-ing certain manufactured products as cheaply as pos-sible. We import them in ex-change for goods which we can produce more cheaply.
To attempt to obtain selfsufficiency by the extension of protective tariffs would probably mean, that we would cease to , have any ex-portable surplus to pay for imports long before we be-came independent of the need for imports,
i That problem could onlj ¡be solved by a lowering oí 1 our living standards, a ¡policy which would penalise ourselves without benefiting anyone else. .
It would De neither altru-
ism nor escapism, merely
lunacy.
IAN H. LEYS (Mt. Beck-with).